A Ribbon of Life Through the Concrete of Houston

Flood Bond Election: New Projects Added

Tensions on Buffalo Bayou

August 19, 2018

The Harris County Flood Control District presented to Harris County Commissioners Court Tuesday, Aug. 14, its final list of flood risk reduction projects that could be funded with the proceeds of $2.5 billion in bonds over a period of 10-15 years.

These include $30 million for design and construction of replacement bridges along Buffalo Bayou, apparently targeting bridges that went under water during Harvey or are thought to be obstructing the flow.

The new list includes $500,000 for studies to investigate “bridges over Buffalo Bayou, the channel conveyance capacity around Beltway 8, Rummel Creek Road bridge and potential high flow bypasses at various locations along the bayou for the purpose of reducing the risk of flooding along the channel.”

Also newly included is $200,000 for investigation of the “effectiveness of small detention sites in the Buffalo Bayou watershed for the purpose of reducing the risk of flooding.”

Rivers and streams are dynamic systems, evolving through the landscape to find equilibrium, balancing energy, flow, and sediment transport. While meandering streams carry more water because they are longer (p. 9), artificially straightening streams shortens the channel and increases the speed of the flow, which can cause more erosion and flooding. (See below.) Meandering streams are more stable, healthier, cleaner, and more biologically diverse. (p. 2)

Some six miles of Buffalo Bayou below Barker Dam was rerouted, stripped, and straightened in the late Forties and Fifties by the Corps of Engineers through what is now Terry Hershey Park to several hundred feet below Beltway 8. Environmentalists, including Terry Hershey, Frank Smith, George Mitchell, and others, many of whom also lived on the bayou, led a popular movement in the Sixties and Seventies to stop the Corps from stripping, straightening, and concreting the bayou all the way to the Shepherd Bridge.

As a result, much of Buffalo Bayou remains in a relatively natural, meandering state.